


Afire

by schizoauthoress



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Color-Coded Soulmate Names, Gen, Howard Stark has a filthy mouth hence the rating, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Latina Maria Stark, Latino Tony Stark, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, and it's in the background so you'll forgive me for not tagging it, lowkey racebending because I can, there's another relationship but it's a surprise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6649999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schizoauthoress/pseuds/schizoauthoress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony was born without a Name written on him.  If it doesn't develop by the age of twenty, he'll be categorized as a Blank. Given the Names his parents have, he's not sure being a Blank is a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire." - Ferdinand Foch_

"Inscription," Howard liked to declare, breath laden with scotch more often than not, "is a load of shit."

(If Maria was in the room, she'd hiss his name disapprovingly. If Edwin Jarvis were in the room, he'd give a little sigh through his nose. Sometimes, though, they weren't in the room, and Howard would continue.)

"Your mother and I don't have each other's Names written on us, and we do fine! Having a Name doesn't mean shit, boy, and don't let anybody tell you different!" Howard would insist. 

He seemed to take a perverse sort of pride in the fact that Tony was a Blank, when most people would cluck their tongues sympathetically.

****

Tony had seen his mother's Name a few times -- the only one she had, a strong blue that stood out from the light brown skin of her stomach, usually hidden by clothing. Occasionally, though, she wore a bikini when sunning herself by the pool.

"This?" Maria had said, the first time Tony asked, "This is my Name. My best friend. She's back on the island right now. You remember your Auntie Carmen?"

She was Auntie even though she and Maria weren't sisters. Tony nodded. That was what blue Names meant, after all. A Soulmate you loved, but weren't in love with.

****

Tony wasn't meant to see his father's Name. He knew this without asking, knew it because Howard was always covered up somehow. Tony had a few candidate spots in mind, given the things Howard wore. But he felt no real need to see it, either.

So it had been something of a shock to trip over his drunken and dozing father, after being sent down to the workshop to fetch him, and realize where the Name was written...

Everyone knew who Steve Rogers was. Tony had known for a long time that Howard had helped make Steve Rogers into Captain America.

He hadn't expected to see that name written in red across the back of Howard's wrist.

Tony retreated back out the workshop door and shut it, resting his head against the cool wood for a moment. At least he knew now why Howard always wore a thick-banded watch or those ridiculous terrycloth sweatbands when he was swimming. He sort of wished he didn't.

Everyone knew what a red Name meant, after all.

He took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and took another small step back. Then he pounded loudly on the workshop door, like he was expecting his father to be working with power tools or something.

He heard Howard startle awake. Heard the shatter of the empty alcohol bottle on the concrete, and Howard's curses and shuffling as he went looking for his watch.

"Dad! Jarvis says you skipped breakfast and lunch and he won't let you skip dinner!"

Howard didn't need to know what Tony knew.


	2. Afire, Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony decides to research Inscription by various methods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: My Spanish is barely at the high school level anymore, so I just didn't attempt to translate anything except the first two sentences. Just know that all of Maria and Tony's conversation in the first section is meant to be in Spanish in-universe unless otherwise noted.

A week had passed since Tony's unexpected -- unwanted -- glimpse of the Name that made his father one of the Inscribed. He couldn't talk to Howard about it, of course, because he was not supposed to know about it at all.

Even if he could, Tony wasn't sure that he would.

So he was lingering outside the slightly ajar door of Maria's study. She was on the phone with one of the contributers to her charitable organization, and Tony was waiting for the click of the handset in the cradle which would allow him to interrupt without angering her.

Once it came, he pushed lightly on the door, widening the gap, and called out, "Mamá?"

She responded in Spanish, "Adelante, mijo," and Tony walked in, shutting the door all the way behind him.

Maria raised one elegant dark brow at him, waiting for him to speak again. Tony knew not to take up too much of her time when she was working for the Foundation. But she knew that when he spoke to her in their first language, and in private, that it concerned something important to him.

Howard didn't understand Spanish well enough to keep up with conversation between two fluent speakers. He showed little inclination to improve his skills. Tony had admitted a few times that he was grateful for that; Maria kept her thoughts to herself.

"I want to know about meeting a Soulmate," Tony said. "People say that you'll know when you've met them. But they never say how."

"It is not easy to explain, Tony," Maria replied.

From anyone else, those words would make him bristle. But he knew that Maria never meant them as a dismissal, simply a statement of fact.

"Were you... born with Auntie Carmen's name?" He gestured vaguely toward her, and one of Maria's hands moved from the arm of her chair to press against her stomach.

When a baby was born with a Name, the color was always purple. And it would resolve itself one way or another, when the person actually came into contact with their Soulmate -- shades of blue, or another cool color, for platonic; and shades of red, or another warm color, for romantic. (Red and blue are the most common, but variation is not unheard of.) Physical sensations -- most commonly a feeling of warmth, or a slight shock upon the first touch -- were reported by the all the Inscribed.

"No," Maria answered. "We met when we were eight years old."

"Then you've felt it!" Tony said, grinning.

"We could never agree on what it was like, to see each other for the first time," Maria said, as though Tony had not interrupted. His smile faded a bit, becoming more subdued. "Carmen said it was... a bit like getting shocked by static, only pleasant, and then warm. I thought... for a moment I thought I heard music. And the warmth only came when she put her hand on my arm and asked if I was all right."

"So it was different for the two of you."

"I think it's different for everyone. People don't... usually talk about such things, mijo."

Tony sighed, irritated. "I wish they would."

"It's not considered polite," Maria pointed out. She smiled as she said it, though, knowing that her precocious son considered that a poor excuse for a lack of knowledge. "I think that some of your father's acadmic journals might contain studies on Soulmates. As long as you're careful when handling them, he doesn't need to know which articles you're reading."

It was a reminder, though Tony hardly needed one, of Howard's negative feelings toward being Inscribed. He switched to English to say,

"Thank you, Mom."

Maria's smile shifted to one that was more cool and professional. Then she nodded to him -- already slipping into her business role again -- and Tony was dismissed.

****

As it turned out, collating information about Inscription and Soulmates was just the motivation Tony needed to build a better computer. Sure, he was eleven years old, but building mechanical and electronic devices was old hat to him by now.

It was something to do which made Howard leave him alone for the rest of summer break.

By all appearances, Howard was glad to do so. Maria was somewhat better at remembering that Tony was in the house, but her obligations took her outside of it more often than not.

Tony wondered, in darker moments, why they'd even bothered to have a child.

He dismissed out of hand the idea that they loved him less because he wasn't the child of Soulmates. That was baseless superstition, a stubborn holdover from the days before science had superseded blind guesswork. There were plenty of children whose parents weren't reciprocally Inscribed as romantic Soulmates, whose parents were Inscribed as platonic Soulmates, whose parents weren't Inscribed at all. If Howard and Maria loved Tony less than they ought to have, it was a deficiency that couldn't be blamed on the vagaries of Inscription.

("They love you as much as any parent loves their child," Jarvis insisted, when Tony confessed that worry. "Neither of them is very good at showing it.")

Jarvis meant well, and in some ways made up for the lack of affection from Howard, but there was one small fact that bothered Tony.

Despite his assurances to the contrary, there was no way that Jarvis could know how Howard and Maria Stark felt about Tony.


End file.
